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April 6, 2015 – Walter Stover, a sophomore at Allegheny College, has been selected for the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. The highly competitive scholarship will allow Stover to study Chinese in an intensive eight-week program in Beijing this summer.

The CLS Program, part of a U.S. government effort to expand dramatically the number of Americans studying and mastering critical foreign languages, offers intensive summer language institutes in 13 foreign languages.

Stover, from Charlotte, N.C., is majoring in economics at Allegheny, with a minor in Chinese studies. He hopes to use his major and minor, and his experience in China this summer, to lay the groundwork for a career as a policymaker with the State Department.

Stover has been interested in ancient Chinese history since a very young age, reading “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” when he was 12 and “Journey to the West” not long after. The two works are considered among the greatest works of ancient Chinese literature.

When Stover was required to take a language as part of his high school curriculum, his parents suggested that Chinese would be a natural course of study. Now enrolled in Allegheny College’s highest-level Chinese class, he also serves as a senior writing consultant in the college’s Learning Commons, which provides academic support services for Allegheny students.

Stover took all of his high school classes through an online high school. “I never actually set foot in a classroom until I came to Allegheny,” he says. “I find the classroom experience a much more interesting dynamic. I appreciate the much more direct teacher-student relationship.”

In addition to reading and studying Chinese literature, Stover now writes it – and is currently working on a short story.

“I’m finishing up a sci-fi thriller set in modern China,” he says. “The plot explores what would happen if China was the only country in the world that had nuclear fusion, which would mean it had an unlimited supply of energy. I like to describe complicated things in Chinese, and to describe character interactions in Chinese. It’s good practice.”

A resident of the college’s Max Kade International Wing of North Village, which promotes cross-cultural sharing and exploration, Stover is active in student organizations. He is a member of the college’s Aikido Club and recently started an entrepreneurship club on campus. Members of the entrepreneurship club pitch their ideas for a product or business and then choose which idea to develop. The club is also currently in the semifinals of a highly competitive entrepreneurship competition at Grove City College.

Professor of Religious Studies and History Patrick Jackson, who works with Allegheny students who are interested in applying for nationally competitive fellowships, notes that it’s not just academic credentials that make for a successful candidate.

“Walter applied last year and was an alternate, so he’s been thinking a lot about the process,” Jackson notes. “He’s single-mindedly dedicated to learning Chinese and will do whatever it takes. He was willing to put a lot of work into the application.”